Saying Farewell to Seeking Silverdale

This will be my last post to the Seeking Silverdale and Central Kitsap blog.

Yesterday, I was appointed the Community Relations Director for Kitsap Regional Library. It’s now a four-day a week job rather than a half-time job as KRL’s strategic planning manager. And in this role, I’ll be in charge of the library’s public relations and community relations efforts.

So even if I felt I had the time to continue blogging, it’s no longer appropriate for me to do so.

I realize as I look back on the past few months of posts, I have written more often about the library than was probably appropriate. That’s because when I started writing this blog, I was unemployed and could devote much more time to coming up with a variety of items to mention in my blog posts. I was employed by KRL at the beginning of April, and as my work on the library’s strategic plan progressed, I found that I had less and less time to explore the topics that you as readers deserve from a community news blog. More of my posts were about the library than ever before.

I feel that every one of my posts was newsworthy. But the predominance of items about the library was inappropriate to this blog. And now that it will be my job to be guiding public and community relations for the library, the potential for me to abuse the opportunity to blog for the Kitsap Sun becomes all too real.

This final blog posting ends a 21-year relationship with the Kitsap Sun. I was hired on Halloween, 1988, by then editor Gene Gisley, to join the Sun’s staff as the city editor. Under Gisley and his successor editors, Mike Phillips, Brian Stallcop and Scott Ware, I was fortunate to serve as a newsroom manager in a variety of roles (city editor, features editor, business editor, opinion page editor and finally managing editor) for 20 years. When we were informed more than a year ago of the third newsroom staff reduction in two years, I decided to leave full-time employment with the Sun and become an early retiree.

I have great respect for the new generation of newsroom leaders at the Sun. Editor David Nelson, Local News Editor Kim Rubenstein and Web Editor Angela Dice have done a phenomenal job bringing you coverage of Kitsap County handicapped by having far fewer resources than that job requires.

When Scott Ware and I were editor and managing editor of the Sun, we didn’t feel we had to staff to do the job we wanted to do — with 45 people in the newsroom. David and Kim are now trying to do that job with 20 fewer staff members than Scott and I had, and at the same time, they are doing more with the kitsapsun.com web site. So I truly appreciate the creativity and innovation David and Kim are bringing to their jobs.

And while I’ve enjoyed continuing my relationship with the paper in my “retirement” and into my transition to a new job, I know it’s time now to move on.

I hope the Kitsap Sun will be able to find someone who can take this blog far beyond where I’ve been able to steer it. Silverdale needs the benefits of a good reporter who can be the mirror who reflects news, information and trends back to residents and can help build the sense of community Central Kitsap deserves.

Take care, and I definitely hope to see you at the library.

— Jeff